This year’s most meaningful birthday gift
My birthday was yesterday, and I received quite a few gifts, and still have some gifts in transit. And I just want to engrave a gift into the memory by dedicating a blog post for it.
Tl; dr;
A marble chess set that is the same age as mine. However it does have some broken pieces and I will need to find a mason or a sculptor to fix it or replicate the piece.
The gift giver
She is a special friend of mine, and depending on how it goes I will demystify her in later blog posts, and also update this one too. I endorse her for the well-thoughtful gift and also her dedication to help other people. She also has a constant improving mindset, and actually follow through with actions; which I highly value.
The present
This is the chess set, which now sits in my office and I look at it every day. All pieces are hand crafted from marbles, and the chessboard is also marble with wooden boundaries. If you look closer, the wooden boundaries is also hand crafted with symbols.
The special thing about this chess set is it was created in 1991 (approximately), which puts this at the same age as me. Therefore, it adds to the preciousness of the gift. Also there are some broken pieces which I need to fix. To me it just means nothing is perfect and by continuously improving we get better over time.
The broken pieces
There are 2 broken pieces, the pawn that loses its base, and the rook that is broken into smaller pieces.
I will need to replace this pawn with a new hand crafted piece to bring the chess board back to its glory day. It could take quite a bit of time to find someone who can work on this, but I have high hope.
I will need to glue this piece together, but it would be great if I can pass this to the sculptor to carve the piece from scratch too. Luckily all the smaller pieces are not missing as we broke it accidentally.
Summary
The chess set will be a beautiful piece of decoration in my home later. As time goes by, it will remind me of who gave it to me, how fragile things are and whether improvements complete me in a good way.
“A diplomat is a man who always remembers a woman’s birthday but never remembers her age.” – Robert Frost
By Tuan Nguyen
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